Monday, March 15, 2010

How you know you're traveling with a bunch of road warriors

I've traveled pretty heavily for my job over the past ten years.  Hanging with a group of my peers this past week made me realize all of the quirks that we've all developed from so much travel.

Here's how you know you're traveling with a bunch of road warriors:

  1. They carry 12 different chargers with them for their cell phones, laptops, kindles, noise-cancelling headphones and blue-tooth ear piece, and all of the cables necessary to connect to a rental car and hotel's sound system with their iPod.
  2. If you look in the bathroom, you see their toiletries broken into two bags: one clear plastic bags with bottles of 3oz clear liquids and gels, and another with the rest of their shower kit
  3. You'll see guys who in any down second are checking their e-mail on their iPhone/Blackberry and pulling out a laptop out of nowhere to go online, or dialing into a conference call from the middle of a golf course.
  4. Exactly 24 hours before their flight's check-in, everything is dropped to check in for their flight to ensure the best possible first class upgrade potential.
  5. They travel with $3 cash and know every place possible you can use a corporate card to make sure that all corporate expenses are easily tracked
  6. They will go through unnatural acts to stay at their hotel chain of choice in order to get their elite statuses and points.
  7. They know every detail of their frequent flyer/hotel/rental-car/credit-card status programs.
  8. They can show up in a town without a map or an address of where they're supposed to go, start driving and dialing at the same time to figure out where supposed to be.
  9. They can get off the airplane in 30 seconds and be in a rental car, driving off the airport lot 5 minutes later.
  10. They can tell you exactly what kinds of food and booze are served in the airport/airline clubs and when they'll get a meal in first class and when they won't.

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